North Korea's apparent test of a nuclear weapon has changed the security situation in Asia. SPIEGEL spoke with Yan Xuetong, Professor for International Studies at Peking's Qinghua University, about what went wrong. SPIEGEL: Officially relations between China and North Korea are described as "as close as lips and teeth." Has the nuclear weapons test put an end to that? Yan: China and North Korea are no longer close allies. SPIEGEL: How is the relationship now? Yan: Not normal. China's relationship to North Korea is even worse than its relationship with Kenya or other African states. SPIEGEL: China's attempts to prevent Kim Jong Il from building the bomb have been in vain. What went wrong?Yan: The Americans committed a grave mistake when they levied sanctions against North Korea and when they excluded the country from the international banking system. They also refused to rule out an attack on North Korea and did not grant Pyongyang a security guarantee. ... http://www.spiegel.de

QUITO, Ecuador A Bible-toting banana magnate who favors close ties with the U.S. defied expectations by narrowly outpolling an admirer of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in the first round of Ecuador's presidential election. Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador's wealthiest man, will head to a Nov. 26 runoff vote against leftist outsider Rafael Correa after neither won an outright victory in Sunday's election. With slightly more than 70 percent of ballots counted, Noboa received 26.7 percent of the vote, compared with 22.5 percent for Correa, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. The winner needed 50 percent, or at least 40 percent and a 10-point lead over the rest of the field, to avoid a runoff. Although a runoff had been expected, the result was unexpected because Correa had led recent polls. E-Vote, the Brazilian company contracted by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to provide a quick count, stopped operations after reaching 70.2 percent of the vote in the pre-dawn hours ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2573128

US policy in Iraq is not working and George Bush should consider radical changes, according to a top-level panel backed by the president.With the White House coming under increasing pressure over the carnage in Iraq, the recommendations from the bipartisan 10-member panel, led by former secretary of state James Baker, could provide political cover for Mr Bush, should he decide to change course.Two options under consideration would involve withdrawing American troops in phases, and bringing Iraq's neighbours, Iran and Syria, into a joint effort to stop the fighting, the Los Angeles Times reported today.In a press conference last week, Mr Bush reiterated his position that the US would not leave Iraq "until the job was done"....http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1923778,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

The sprawling state of Pennsylvania is the kind of place George Bush's Republican party has to win if they are to keep control of Congress when Americans go to the polls next month. It's a middle ground between north-eastern urban centres like New York and the declining industrial heartland of the Midwest, a place where small towns really do have churches, libraries and sweet shops on their main squares. "This is Middle America," says Barbara M Neill, a retired music teacher who now writes for the Laurel Mountain Post, a community newspaper in south-western Pennsylvania. Although the region has traditionally voted for Democrats, locals "have traditional values and beliefs", and they support - and join - the military, Mrs Neill says. "This is a patriotic area of the country," she adds. But people here are confused about an issue that was once assumed to be a guaranteed vote-winner for the Republicans, she says - the war in Iraq. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6041658.stm

Car bombs killed at least 30 people in Iraq on Monday, including two near simultaneous blasts in a mixed area in Baghdad shortly before Muslims gathered at sunset to break their fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. The fresh violence came as Bush assured Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that Washington had not set any deadline for the Iraqi government to get control of sectarian violence threatening to plunge Iraq into civil war. U.S. commanders have warned that Sunni insurgent groups such as al Qaeda battling the U.S.-backed Shi'ite-led government would launch attacks during Ramadan. On Sunday, 10 people were killed in restive Kirkuk in multiple car bombs. Iraq has been gripped by sectarian violence between Muslim Shi'ites and Sunnis since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in February. Thousands have been killed and more than 300,000 have been forced to flee their homes....http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061016/ts_nm/iraq_dc

Severe thunderstorms with torrential rains and a possible tornado hit southeast Texas overnight, killing two people, flooding roads and shutting down numerous schools Monday.As much as 10 inches of rain fell in the Houston-Galveston area. More rain is expected across Texas on Monday, with the possibility of damaging winds and flooding, the National Weather Service said.Two women were found dead in a sport-utility vehicle on a heavily flooded roadway in Houston Monday morning. A police spokesman didn't know the extent of the flooding, but broadcast reports said the SUV was in 8 feet of water.South of Houston, as many as 20 homes were damaged when a suspected tornado roared through Magnolia Beach before daybreak, Calhoun County Sheriff B.B. Browning said. The only injury reported in the small community 75 miles northeast of Corpus Christi was a cut thumb a man suffered from flying glass, he said....http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2006-10-16-texas-flooding_x.htm?csp=34